


say what you mean

by celativesolipsist



Series: everyone is gay [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Is Ronan Talking About His Feelings OOC? fuck you he does it anyway, M/M, Minor Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Minor Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish/Blue Sargeant, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish - Freeform, anyway bluesey is part of this too but very light background, anyway that should do it it's just a bunch of talking and kissing, consent is important kids and negotiations take a long time, it's mostly ronan and gansey this time who am I kidding, literally gansey says Polyamory Negotiations, noah doesn't even get mentioned in here jesus who am I, oh thank god that can be the title, so does writing fic evidently, the majority of this fic is Ronan just silently waiting for people to say what they mean, theoretically because this is the second post I've made to it since what december 2015, this is part of a series where THEORETICALLY the gangsey becomes a polycule
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 17:57:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13253586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celativesolipsist/pseuds/celativesolipsist
Summary: “What, you think it’ll be more healthy if weallbecome ridiculously codependent instead of pairing off like normal people?”in which adam and gansey and ronan talk some, then adam and ronan talk a little more, and then gansey and ronan talk for a while. there is kissing. takes place directly after Wait and See. literally directly after. probably won't make sense unless you read that one first, but I wrote it in 2015 so I cannot be held responsible for differences in writing style or quality





	say what you mean

**Author's Note:**

> how long has it been since December 2015? probably long enough that this measly fic is long overdue.

Ronan raised his eyebrows. “What, right now?”

Adam avoided eye contact as he set about finding his shirt. “There’s work in the morning, there’s homework to do so that I don’t have to do it between getting out of work and coming back here, there’s sleep so I’m not exhausted when I finally get back here—”

Ronan threw up his hands, but didn’t sound angry when he said “Alright, all aboard the Lynch express, next stop: St. Agnes!” and set about gathering his own clothes.

Adam was busy pulling his shirt over his head while Gansey shot Ronan a worried look and mouthed _“Did we scare him?”_ and Ronan grimaced and shrugged in a _guess we’ll find out_ sort of way as he pulled on his jeans.

When Adam’s head finally popped out of his shirt, he was met by one very anxious face, and one face busy putting far more effort than usual into straightening his tank top.

“Adam,” Gansey started, hesitating as if he was choosing his words very carefully, “Did- You remember, I said that if you wanted, we’d stop and never talk about it again. Do you- I mean, it would be alright if-”

“Gansey,” Adam said, voice firm, but face gentle, “I really do have work in the morning, but I promise I’m coming back tomorrow and that I meant everything I’ve said tonight. I just- I want to think, for a minute, about everything, and I think I want to talk, tomorrow, once I’ve thought about what I want to say. Alright?”

Gansey looked mollified. Adam nodded once, then glanced at Ronan. “Lynch express?”

“Now boarding,” Ronan said dryly, and led the way out the door and down the steps to the BMW.

Neither said anything until the car stopped at the only traffic light on the way to St. Agnes, and Ronan glanced over at Adam to find Adam staring back, chewing his lip, the red light highlighting his furrowed brow, the planes of his face, the bridge of his nose with the freckles dusting across it—

Ronan took a breath and turned his head to focus back on the red traffic light. “Gay panic, Parrish?”

“What? No, I’m- I’m thinking.”

Ronan pretended the red traffic light was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

“How long have- You and Gansey-” Adam was not nearly as eloquent as usual, but Ronan decided not to point this out.

“Before my dad died,” Ronan began, “Things were a bit different. Summer after freshman year, we, well. It was- I knew my dad wasn’t- we’re Catholic, Adam, and Gansey’s family are all _republicans_ , and we were just friends, good friends. And then he died about a week later, and I shaved my head, and I hated myself, and Gansey’s parents— it was a mess. It was just too much all at once, you know? And we were still close, but Gansey was trying to, I don’t know, take on a fatherly role or something, so we— changed, I guess.”

At some point during this speech, the light had changed, and Ronan has started driving again, which gave Ronan a very good excuse to continue to avoid Adam’s eyes. “It was- experimentation, between friends. That’s all.” Ronan was suddenly very glad he hadn’t made fun of Adam’s stilted sentences, because he knew he wasn’t doing any better himself.

Adam hummed. “But with me it’s different, isn’t it?”

Ronan let out his breath in a gust. “It’s… Yeah, it’s different.”

“But it would be cool, right, if we worked it out in a way where everyone could still kiss Gansey sometimes.”

This was not the train of thought Ronan had been expecting. He swung into the St. Agnes parking lot and slid smoothly into the space closest to Adam’s door. He put the car in park, and looked at Adam, whose face betrayed more anxiety than his voice had. Ronan blinked. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

Adam looked relieved, which confused Ronan a little bit.

“Here I was thinking you were having second thoughts and wanted to go home and have your sexuality crisis in peace,” Ronan joked, turning the key in the ignition so that the car fell silent around them.

Adam laughed, just once, as he undid his seatbelt. “I still might have a crisis once I get upstairs, but I meant everything I said. Except maybe next time we all kiss, we can do it without the premise of Truth or Dare?”

“Or Spin the Bottle,” Ronan agreed, then snorted. “Blue was onto us the whole time, _spin the bottle_ , the whole point of that game is making out—”

He didn’t finish the sentence, because Adam was suddenly much closer, and then Adam’s hand was cupping his jaw, and then they were kissing again, softly this time, like they’d have plenty of time for everything else later. And then Adam was smiling at him as he opened the car door, and Ronan was staring as Adam got out of the car, leaned back in, and said “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and he didn’t wink but with the way he said it he may as well have, and then the car door was closed and Adam was unlocking the door that led to his apartment. Ronan blinked. He watched as Adam shut the door, and then as the light came on upstairs, and then a grin slowly spread across his face.

—

Gansey had put on pyjama pants by the time Ronan made his way back to Monmouth, and was sitting on his bed with a beer, which was a rare sight. Ronan could probably count on his fingers all the times he’d seen Gansey drink, and at least a third of them had to have been champagne at Gansey family events. Ronan raised an eyebrow at Gansey, but didn’t stop on his way to his bedroom, where he traded his jeans for a pair of sweats, and then to the bathroom, where he got another beer out of the fridge and cracked it open, before coming to sit on the edge of Gansey’s bed.

He took a sip, and waited for Gansey to speak.

“Is Adam alright?”

“He’s fine. I think he’ll have a lot to say tomorrow, but it won’t be bad. I think part of it is that he just wants Blue to be there.”

Gansey leaned forward. “Blue? She said she was alright with it, she called just to reassure me—”

Ronan waved a hand. “For negotiation purposes.”

“Negotiation— Ronan, what—”

Ronan shrugged. “He liked kissing both of us.” He took a sip of his beer.

“Ronan, you’re telling me that we will be having polyamory negotiations with Adam Parrish and Blue Sargeant tomorrow afternoon—” Gansey cut himself off this time, shaking his head and taking a long draught of beer.

“Gansey, how is it that you know what polyamory is, exactly?”

Gansey had the decency to look apologetic. “Blue and I have talked about it,” he said, “300 Fox Way isn’t exactly the most traditional home.”

Ronan snorted, and took another swig of beer.

Gansey was quiet for long enough that Ronan turned to scrutinize him. Upon eye contact, Gansey sighed, and dropped his gaze. “You really like him, don’t you?” Gansey asked, fiddling with the label on the bottle. “Like how I like Jane.”

“Yeah. He’s… important,” Ronan felt like the word was inadequate, but he couldn’t bring himself to use a weightier one. “You’re important too, but it’s… different.”

“It’s different,” Gansey echoed, nodding and glancing at Ronan and away again, “Yes.”

There was another silence, and this time Ronan watched Gansey think. He had peeled away the corner of the label and was beginning to pick it the rest of the way off. After a bit, Gansey looked up again. There was a ghost of a smile playing around his mouth as he said, “You know, you seem to be the calmest of all of us about this.”

Ronan smiled at that, and shrugged. “I mean, I knew I was gay. I’ve known that I’d like this. At this point I’m waiting for everyone to catch up, and Adam did, and if you don’t,” he shrugged again, “I guess it won’t be any different than it is now. We’re still important to each other, obviously, and I don’t think this is big enough to change that.”

Gansey nodded. He took another sip of beer, and went back to slowly divesting the bottle of its label. Ronan leaned back until he was laying crosswise on the bed, his legs dangling off the side, his mostly empty bottle held by his hip. He looked at the ceiling, even when he felt that Gansey had lost interest in his fight with the label and was again staring at him.

This time, when Gansey broke the silence, his voice was much softer.

“Do you miss it?”

Ronan turned his head, and took in the whole picture that was Gansey, from this angle, lit only by the lamp on his bedside table and the light in the bathroom that Ronan had left on, shirtless, sitting cross legged with his back up against the headboard, in his white and blue pinstripe pyjama pants, peeling the label off a bottle of beer Ronan had obtained because Gansey would never walk into the store part of a gas station and silently dare the clerk to ask for I.D., his shoulders broad, his face wistful, gazing down at the bottle like he wasn’t ready to make eye contact yet, his eyes somehow softened by the fact that his glasses were on the table, and not on his face—

Ronan looked back at the ceiling. “Gonna have to be more specific, Gansey-boy.”

There was a pause, and Ronan felt Gansey’s eyes on him again. “What we were, right before- the week we put the fridge in,” Gansey finished, lamely.

“You mean the week before my father died,” Ronan said to the ceiling, “When we made out a lot and decided it would be a great idea to wire up the fridge right next to the toilet.”

Gansey let out a puff of breath. “Do you miss it?”

“Don’t go making it your fault we haven’t done any of that since then,” Ronan warned the ceiling, “It was best for all of us that we had a stable relationship through that period in my life and that we didn’t become even more ridiculously codependent than we already are.”

“Ronan," Gansey groaned, “I really appreciate how forthcoming you’re being right now, and I agree that at the time I think we did the best we could, but that’s not what I asked.”

“What, you think it’ll be more healthy if we _all_ become ridiculously codependent instead of pairing off like normal people?” Ronan leaned up on his elbow to chug the last of his beer.

“I miss it,” Gansey offered, quietly. “I liked it, and I liked kissing you again tonight. I liked how it felt simple and right, just like kissing Adam did. I’d like to have the chance to do it more often, if you’d like.”

Ronan sat up completely, and then he stood up, and he could feel how Gansey got tangibly more anxious the more Ronan moved without saying anything, as he set his empty bottle on the bedside table, and then how he became considerably less anxious as Ronan took Gansey’s bottle, with its ruined label, out of Gansey’s hands, setting it, too, on the bedside table. He then climbed back onto the bed, sitting on his heels just a breath away from Gansey. He looked at Gansey, really looked, and Gansey looked back at him, and after a moment of eye contact that had been avoided for the whole conversation, Ronan leaned in and kissed him.

It was almost syrupy slow, a type of kiss they had never shared before, and Ronan felt himself melt into it, his hand coming up to caress Gansey’s jaw, Gansey’s arms snaking around his neck, and when they came up for air, both breathing deeply, Gansey leaned past Ronan to turn off the bedside lamp. He laid down, pulling Ronan so that he had to follow, until they were lying on their sides facing each other, and exchanged lazy kisses that slowly devolved into lazy brushes of their noses, until they fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> why is it so short? why is the ending so... like that? because I rode this wave of writing mania as far as it could take me, and apparently the ride stops at 3:00 AM. goodnight!
> 
> Will I ever write more? who knows! maybe tomorrow, maybe literal years from now. gotta keep you on your toes!
> 
> this fic was inspired by how hard it is to actually get shit done, my empty romance life, how badly I want to kiss someone right now, the headcold I've had for the past week, the fact that I've started going to therapy and hopefully will someday be able to articulate my feelings more clearly and succinctly than these characters do, although to be honest when pressed each and every one of them does say what they mean. so that's neat. love to do that someday. it's three in the morning and I am so, so tired!
> 
> shoutout to the comment on the niall lynch page of the raven cycle wiki that gave me the quote i needed to draw all that random information about the summer after ronan and gansey's freshman year at aglionby. personally it was actually the winter of my freshman year when I had my own Gay Awakening, but it has been a while since then! wow, has it been a while since then. anyway, I think that this fic technically still fits canon if you pretend it was written back before trk came out and not, say, in early january of 2018, a little over two whole years after the first part of it was written. sorry about that. it's late, and I am going to post this now. good talk, see you next time!


End file.
